rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance How A Stupid Karen Got Herself Fired!

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance In today's episode, a high-ranking executive at a large company decides that she doesn't need mandatory training because she's just too important and has too many things to do! OP is happy to accommodate her, even though it was Karen's boss who specifically required Karen to take the training. I'm sure this won't come back to bite you in the butt, Karen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now streaming on Paramount Plus. Hey baby, I hear the blues. It's calling, toss salads, and scrambled eggs. Y'all know how this goes. And maybe I seem a bit confused. Yeah, maybe. But I got you picked. Ha-ha-ha.

But I don't know what to do with those toss salads and scrambled eggs. Kelsey Grammer returns in Frazier. Life's calling again. New series now streaming on Paramount Plus. Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash from Liches Compliance, where a high-ranking caron at a company

gets in big trouble. Our next Reddit post is from TBO55. This is a brief story for my time at a telecoms contract center. I've worked for a rather large Australian provider that everyone knows and actively hates, mostly because it's fun to hate them. In this story, we're doing outbound calls to transition people to the new NBN network. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Australia's internet, it's third world, literally. Our internet was slower than Nigeria's internet until we rolled out the NBN and upgraded to

slightly faster than third world speeds. Also worth mentioning, much like the company I worked for, the NBN was universally hated. Because it was garbage, enough said. Anyway, like all call centers, we had a bunch of miserable hoops to jump through in order to bring our paycheck up to a level that could be considered humane. Our capitalist overlords refer to those hoops as KPIs. Keep performance indicators for the blissfully ignorant. Anyway, with a new campaign came a new set of KPIs.

Conversion rate, active call time, after call time, and customer satisfaction were the KPIs of the day. Now, these KPIs were normally complete BS. You had to hit some absolutely god-tier numbers in order to collect a half-dease and paycheck. However, in this particular case, there was a loophole. See, due to the controversial nature of the NBM, we were told to focus on quality over quantity.

They wanted an excellent customer experience and the new KPIs were a reflection of that. As such, the quantity of conversions was not a KPI and when I questioned if we had time limits on calls I was told. We don't care what you do, but long calls means a good experience, so keep them on the line and get them switched over. And so began the best work month I had in that sole trap. And you know that stereotype of old people talking for eternity and beyond? It's a stereotype for a reason. Each morning I would log in and volunteer for the age clients, which was easy because they

were normally the hardest people to convert. They were fearful of scams and technology and such, so many people didn't want to call them. And then, I'd start to chat. See, when speaking with the elderly, all it takes is a well-placed poker too, and you can literally have them speaking for hours. So for the next month, I took 2-4 calls a day, down from 20-30. I had almost zero after call time, I had an 80% conversion rate, and 90% customer satisfaction

rate. Turns out, people tend to like you after you take the time to listen to them. Each phone call, assuming I wasn't told to go screw myself up on introducing myself, would last 2-3 hours minimum. With my record being a 7-hour call to a lovely bloke name Stan. He told some great war stories. I ended up doubling my normal paycheck. and my managers, while not being entirely happy with my nonsense, put up with it, because at the end of the day, those were the rules and the KPIs that were given. I got my paycheck, the old folks got a good chat, and my employer got to pay through the

nose. Happy endings for all. I proceeded to hand in my resignation once KPIs went back to normal, which, to this day, I regard as one of the best decisions I've ever made. Our next reddit post is from Axel Walk. This happened in 2018. My husband and I own a company that works with companies to provide doctors and nurses for factories and construction, ocean, first aid training, and some other things.

One of our major accounts is a power company. We not only provide onsite personnel, but also train them on first aid. This particular company is very strict on their health and safety protocols. They require all their crews to have an up-to-date first aid certificate, and they had chilled a decent amount of money to equip each one of their sites, including their offices with two AEDs, that is automatic electric discharge. We were also required to provide adjusted training for their staff and crews. Because of the nature of this job, we trained them for 3 hours over 2 days. One day was

theory with a written test and at the end of the next day was a practical exam. We were scheduled for a 2 day training with this company. We were told it would be a small class around 40 people, so I booked myself in our senior trainer. We arrived for the training, set up, get the roll call, and then this happens. As I said, this company is very hardcore with their health and safety. Except for their crews, they require every person that has even the slightest chance of visiting a power plant to have a current first aid certificate. This means we trained a lot of suits. As the room is filling up, I noticed our senior trainer, John, talking with a woman I didn't know.

The conversation is heated and I approach to see what's happening. Is everything okay? No, it is not. As I was saying to this man, I don't need to take this class. I did first aid in my previous company and I have very important work to do. John says, as I explained to Madam, we follow the company policies about training. But I already know everything! Ma'am, your manager booked you for this class.

He probably thinks it's more important than anything else. No, I'm very high in the company. If you don't release me immediately, you may lose your contract. At that point, she looked at us with crossed arms and a smug face. John, being a no-nonsense former trainer for the Army's Medic Corps, was ready to explode. Cue malicious compliance. There was a rule for the training set by the company that any personnel that could provide an up-to-date certificate could sign a waiver for the in-person training, but they still had to take the test.

I provided this as an option to Karen. She wasn't completely happy, but she took it. I explained that there were two tests, one in writing and one in practical. She said fine and notifier when it was time to take them. So, two and a half hours later, she's sitting down to take the written test. Immediately, I can see that she's struggling, since most of the questions are tailored for an industrial setting. The test ends when we collect the papers. At a quick glance, I knew that she had, at best, passed with a very low grade. Despite her struggling with the theory, she still came in for the practical test the next day.

In this case, I knew she was going to fail. Along with her normal CPR training, we had added an extra automatic electrical discharge training per the company rule. And despite being a fairly easy and straightforward machine to use, she had serious trouble. So we pack up and go back to base. We write the tests, and as expected, she was the only one who failed both spectacularly. From the other 39 people, only one of them had failed the written test. We sent the results and certificates to the company.

Monday morning, just after we opened, I got a call from Chad, the company's chief operating officer. He's one of our major contacts because training was part of his responsibilities. The call went like this. Good morning, OP. I'm calling about the results of the training. Good morning, Chad. I had a feeling you'd call. Can you tell me why my assistant COO failed? Is Karen your assistant? Yes. Well, she said she had very important work to do and already had a certificate and she signed the waiver. Of course she did.

I could hear the frustration in his voice. Can we arrange a quick training for today? I want you to do it. Let me check. It has to be a late one, otherwise tomorrow at 10. Hmm, tomorrow then. see you at the office. The next day rolls around, and at 10am sharp him in the offices. I'm led into a conference room with Glass all around and told to wait.

A few minutes later, Chad and Karen step into the room. She looks like she's been chastised. She sat across from me while Chad stood. Chad asked for the waiver, which I handed to him. He took a look at it and gave it back. As I explained to you when you were hired, you had to pass this training. The certificate you gave us was coming up

and you came from a different field. Now do the training properly and pass it. It's one of the prerequisites for the job. Karen took the training properly this time and passed. Since then, she has never complained about first-day training again. Ready to get your money working harder? Switch to QuestTrade. Can it is number one rated online broker by money sense? Not only does QuestTrade have built-in research tools, their customer support

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Ah shoot, we didn't realize you were supposed to get a gift for our dog, walker guy We almost forgot about our dentist Dr. Kurt We didn't expect to get a gift from her Or our cousin like to get his name He got us something nice, better as it per case For last minute deals on gifts for people you forgot Get past the free shipping at Amazon Our next reddit posted from Always the Noob. About a decade ago, I was the new guy at the company.

We have people flying from all over the world to start putting gear together before leaving again for job sites, and one of the things I did in my earlier days was pick those people up at the airport, take them to their hotels after work, etc. I pick up a guy who's gonna be my boss at an upcoming job. The airport is about an hour from our headquarters in hotel if you take the highway and main roads. When I met him at the airport, he requested I follow the directions on this awesome new GPS app that he's got on his phone. He swears it finds the absolute fastest routes. I'm paid by the hour and I'm the new guy here, so sure, no problem.

It ends up taking almost 25% longer than the main roads would have, but I'm the new guy here, so sure, no problem. It ends up taking almost 25% longer than the main roads would have, but I'm not bothered. The next day I'm asked to take him to his hotel. It's a straight shot a few miles down the road, but the road is always stop and go at rush hour. I make a turn off the road almost immediately in order to take a route that I know is faster, and he starts giving me a gentle amount of grief about not listening to his magical GPS app. I get him to the hotel in great time, but he still just won't stop insisting that the main road, which we could see was backed up, would have been faster. Okay, fine. A couple of days later,

we drive a few hours to our primary job site. The trip is fine. I follow his magic app and we arrive without incident. It's the largest job I've done so far, and I admittedly stumbled with a bit of it. The boss tries to give me a pep talk at the end of the day, but fails miserably. One of the critiques he gives me is, you're not here to think! There are engineers on the jobs, and there are techs. I am just a tech. And I'm told I'm basically there to do the grunt work as specified, and just listen to what people like him tell me to do.

Pretty demoralizing lecture honestly, but I take it to heart. Once the event is over, it's my job to take the boss man back to the airport, which I'd like to remind you at this point is in the city that I live in and not where my boss is from. Or running a little later than I would prefer to, but he's the kind of guy who would rather get to the airport 15 minutes before his flight boards. And as always, we're using his GPS, which he's still raving about. I don't know if this dude's friend admitted the app or something, but he's just seriously

faunting over it. Well, we approach what I know is the exit to the airport, but the app says to stay on the highway and take the next exit a mile or two down. So I follow the app, having learned my lesson from the boss, and soon were stopped in a tight single lane construction zone. My boss realizes this and starts to panic. And then he starts asking if I'm sure that I took the right route. I say, the exit that I'd normally take for this airport was a little ways back, but the

GPS says to keep going. You would pass the exit for the airport? His voice is raised, but not shouting. I went past A exit for the airport I called me replied, I'm sure this won't get us there, but with the speed the traffic is moving, I don't know if we'll make your flight. It's already a pretty tight connection. Then he shouted at me, what were you thinking?

Since the car was stopped dead, I turned my head so I could meet his eyes, and very blankly said, I'm not here to think. If Uber had existed at that time, I think he would have gotten out of the car with his bag and called for a ride. As it is, I spent the rest of the trip listening to him yell at some poor airline agent about getting his flight rebooked since by this point it was clear that he wasn't getting there on time. And the thing is, this really wasn't even malicious on my end. I was just too timid to rock the boat anymore, so I was doing exactly as I was told. It's not my fault at Bittem in the butt.

Our next reddit post is from Beslamin. I used to work at a call center where we would get flooded with calls constantly. This is the story of how a busy body boss thought they understood everything since they were in charge. At work, we're given two 15 minute breaks and one 45 minute lunch break. The breaks were scheduled into our days so you could see when they would be, but this would change day by day. My role was a bit different from my co-workers because I was specifically dealing with the higher issue calls.

These calls could take up to one hour to complete and the caller would need to stay on the line, unless they were fine with a callback later but this was rarely the case. Since I never knew when I would be getting these calls, my break times were a shot in the dark because I would never know if I would or wouldn't be on call. I would just take my break as soon as the call was done if my break and call ever intersected which they did 99% of the time. Enter My Boss. During a performance review, I hit all the marks except for attendance.

I asked about this because I know that I missed a few days, but always with a reasonable update for time frame and I never had a no-show day. My boss stated that attendance also applies to break and lunch times, and since I rarely took them at the request of time, I was getting written up. I explained my role what they hired me for and the challenges involved. They didn't care and said that I needed to take breaks when I was told to. I asked them to send me an email so I could print it out, put it on my desk, and never forget again. My boss smiled ear to ear, probably because they thought I was groveling at that point.

And sure enough they did, stating in the email, you must take your breaks only when the schedule tells you to, no time else. There is no excuse. I saved it, printed it out, sent a copy to my own email and followed it to the letter. The next call that happened that same day, of course, happened to run over into my break time. I asked the customer if it would be okay for a call back, and they said no. I stated that, unfortunately, I can't stay on the line

because I'm required to take my break. They became in rage and demanded to speak with my boss. I told my boss and he said I need to apologize and finish the call. I showed him the email that he just sent to me and said, you told me to take my break at this time, no matter what. I'm doing what you told me to do. So I'm taking my break, would you like the customer transferred over or should I just

hang up? My manager took the call over, and from that day on, I never missed an attendance mark. God, busy body bosses are the worst. Down in the comments, we have a similar story from asking me about life. My dad works as an MRI engineer at a large hospital in the East Coast. There's about eight or nine MRI machines in the hospital. His job is just essentially to make sure they work properly. When he first took his job, his boss complained to him that he's in the office too much

and doesn't seem to be working too much. His response? If I'm here in the office, it means everything's working. If you want me to take longer to repair the machine so I would look busy, I can do that, but they'll be out of use longer in the hospital would be losing more money. He never got a complaint after that. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, check out my Patreon where I publish extra episodes. Also, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.